TiMER [Review Time]

Of course when I sign up for Netflix and start rating a few of my favourite movies, they invent for me a category called "Sci-fi Romantic Comedy". I don't even like romantic comedies so I think they just got that part from the gender on my profile. Do not be sceptical. While it seems like combining two formula genres together could only create disaster, that's only if it's not well done; TiMER proved to be well-written, well-acted, funny, thought-provoking and enjoyable. So there.

Planner's block [Ranting by Starlight]

Every writer has their own planning style. No one can tell you how to plan out the plot of your novel because, like most things in writing, you just have to do it your own way - which is very frustrating if you don't know what your way is. Or, as in my case, if you discover what your style is and it totally sucks.

Some people plot everything out on a flow chart before they write their first sentence. Or so I've heard. That would be very nice, to have a roadmap. Wish it worked for me. I've started way too many outlines and never finished a single one. So I've got this nifty story I'm working on and the beginning is awesome and interesting and I'm just reading it over and over again and adding to it until it's a more bloated and less awesome monstrosity because I have no clue where I'm going.

Turns out my style is to worry and stress out over where my plot will take me for about a year, then finally have the pieces click into place of a sudden while I've been writing all over the map for months. Anyone have a time-turner I can borrow to give my roadmap to my past-self so she knows where to go?

What's your planning style?

Cover Released for A Memory of Light [Breaking News Musing]

How relevant. Since I just finished Towers of Midnight.

This cover, by Michael Whelan, was released today, May 3rd.

I hope I don't piss too many people off or hurt any feelings by saying this, but I think this may be the first Wheel of Time cover I've even close to liked. Someday I want a hardcover set of the Australian editions. I think they look very nice.

I really, really did not like Darryl K. Sweet's unfinished cover art. I have a question for WOT dedicates actually; it has been a long time reading to get through this and I don't really remember every detail, but should the flame of Tar Valon and the Dragon's fang make a full yin yang, with a dot of black in the white part and a dot of white in the black? I don't remember the dots being there in the early descriptions. In fact, I don't think it would make any sense.

I get that it's unfinished but I don't like the concept at all. That's supposed to be Elayne, Avhienda and Min? Could be any three women in the bloody world. Again, it's unfinished, but I don't think Sweet could have accomplished bringing our girls to life anyways.

I had the same issue with almost every Sweet cover. He never depicted the characters the way I saw them. He would give Perrin his axe and Mat his hat and ashandarei and think that was all there was to making the characters identifiable. Where's the mischevious expression on Mat's face, the worried one on Perrin's? And why does Rand look like the least interesting hero of all time? I found Sweet's images to be cartoony, which is probably really bad, generic marketing for a Fantasy series, and uninteresting. Don't judge a book by it's cover; this series is very interesting and imaginative, unlike Sweet's work.

Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson [Review Time]

In the prologue of the last of the currently available Wheel of Time books, Jordanderson show that they can make things happen in a mere 20 pages. They move plots. They develop characters. They twist, turn and shock. The only problem is that this novel is one thousand two hundred and eighteen fricking pages in the American paperback edition. That's like The Lord of the Rings plus The Hobbit. If you've hung in for this long and read up to book 13, then it's worth it to wade through the sea of this book, against the current at times, just to get to this prologue where things actually change, but you have to go through about 1200 pages to get there. It's insanely long, but what have we come to expect from Robert Jordan, and did you really think Brandon Sanderson could change anything? Naive.

The Magical, Sublime, Aweful, Fantastical, Mysterious Night Circus! by Erin Morgenstern[Review Time]

Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern has received nothing but praise since its September of 2011 release. I'm not going to go against the grain much here. If you have been searching for more magic since the first time you ever picked up The Hobbit and have been having a hard time finding it, wading through second rate Fantasy re-hashings of the same story over and over, The Night Circus is what you were wishing for all these years. If Tolkien's fading magic made you sad and made you long for a world where the magic wasn't waning but waxing and found in abundance around every corner, The Night Circus is the perfect read for you. Every last word is just plain magical.

You are put in the position of a Reveur, or dreamer: one who has fallen in love with the magical circus. You are given various tastes, smells, touches, sounds and images of the circus that make you fall in love with it instantly, and then you are told the story of the circus and the stakes involved in its existence.

The Circue du Reves was created as the arena for a mysterious type of duel or competition in which neither of the contenders know the rules or even whom their opponent is. But these two contenders, Marco and Celia, are the protagonists we come to care deeply for, and when their competition begins to take a dangerous turn, and it seems one or the other must die for the contest to end, we are split on the issue. But there's plenty of magic and spectacle to distract us from the problem as we watch the circus travel for a few decades and continue to amaze us, night after night.

In fact, the magic is so prevalent in the story that it begins to outshine the plot and the drama. My only complaint would be that there wasn't quite enough tension in the story, such that I never believed for a second that the good guys weren't going to win. But this is Morgenstern's debut novel and hopefully we will see more and better from her in the future. We might not get a very tight story arc here, but what we get is pure excess of imagination. We get to see the workings of a brilliantly creative mind playing with possibilities and the impossible. If that sounds good to you, take a visit to the circus. Become a Reveur with me.